E-Learning Presentation: PowerPoint to the Web

Love it or not, Microsoft PowerPoint is here to stay around your life, even though Web presentation is so hot these days. Most people won't give up PowerPoint in a few of years, because we've invested large amounts of time and talents in creating PowerPoint slide shows to express ourselves before. In the Internet 2.0 times, weak Web accessibility is the key drawback of PowerPoint definitely. This guide will help you make your online presentation alright from here.

Where Should PowerPoint to the Web Start From?

In PowerPoint, you can directly save your presentation as Web pages. You can read more from Microsoft at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HP052667841033.aspx. That's the easiest way to make PowerPoint to Web. However, it's really not recommended. Because its framework layout with scripts is unfriendly to most browsers, and its static slides show without any effects such as transitions and animations is dull to most visitors.

So what is the best approach to make Web pages for online presentation? At first, there are three essential requirements for a great solution of PowerPoint to the Web:1. Retain animations, transitions and other effects from originals;2. Easy to be embedded in Web pages without conflict;3. Protect the author copyrights from being copied.

Make Attractive Online Presentation out of PowerPoint

Since inserting and embedding a PowerPoint presentation into Web pages is not applicable, we may think about what is better way to make online presentation. As we know, Flash is the most popular media to be embedded into Web pages, so we can ask for a help from Flash. Actually, the key advantage of Flash is its great Web accessibility. Therefore PowerPoint to Flash is an applicable way to make the things alright.

In order to convert PowerPoint to Flash, a appropriate converter is important. Most free converter may not do a good job, which just outputs static Flash slide show without animations like PowerPoint itself. So I suggest that you can have a free trial of some great PowerPoint to Flash tool such as Wondershare PPT2Flash at http://www.sameshow.com/download/ppt2flash-download.html.

After installation, launch PowerPoint and you'll find PPT2Flash in menu bar. Then import the presentation, configure the Publish Settings in Wondershare PPT2Flash or add rich media to the presentation with "Record narration", "Import Audio", "Insert Flash" and "Capture Screen" features. Finally click "Publish" to get the output. Just a few of clicks, why not have a trial?

Embed Presentation to the Web Pages As You Like

The last chapter before finale is making a home for your attractive presentation online. If you already have private Web space, that's the best house for hosting. If not, search for some shared online storage services such as Box.net (http://www.box.net). You would insure that your online space is safe and big enough to store your masterpieces. When uploading is done, copy the URL of the uploaded file.

Now all you need to do is setting up some simple HTML codes to place your Flash presentation into any Web pages. You may read a tutorial from W3 School (http://www.w3schools.com/flash/flash_inhtml.asp), or directly use the codes below:

Please note that "URL of the uploaded Flash file" in the codes should be full URL of your uploaded Flash. And the value of height and width depends on your needs.

In whether offline Web page editor or online blog editor, you need to switch to HTML source editing mode, and then simply copy and paste your codes to complete the works.

Now you may find Web accessible PowerPoint presentation is on the show online, and PowerPoint to the Web is just a piece of cake for you. Just post your PowerPoint presentation to your Blog, Share your PowerPoint slideshow in MySpace, Facebook, GeoCites, and Google Pages, etc like this way.

I personally welcome better linking between education professionals and persons with business interests. It's great to have you here. But please make your affiliation clear at the top of such posts, as well as in your profile. Not doing it put you at risk to have comments that unveil your identity and reinforce the possibly tense relationship between the open (education) community and the commercial (business minded) one.

I really like slideshare. But the animations within slides are lost. And it is not good when we do not want to make our presentation globally :-) available.

I use a free applicattion authorPOINT Lite (http://www.authorgen.com/authorpoint-lite-free). It does a good job converting animations and generate presentations with a very good looking. It has a not so small drawback: it does not generate a single SWF file but a set of ones. This can be a problem for publication.

I also try Adobe Captivate. It has a wonderful set of tools for making content for classes. But it is an expensive application.

I used to like Wondershare and was pretty much satisfied with the quality but there were a few things that really bothered me. I totally agree with Lino: animations from the slides are lost if you publish it to Slideshare. I searched the web and found way out - SlideBoom online portal. Good service without quality loss. There I also found iSpring free which is now installed on my PC. I was shocked that they give that ppt to flash converter for free!

It takes a free [<20 people] download and you can add open or closed questions. During the actual presentation you ask your students to react by mobile phone using TXT, [mobile] Internet or Twitter. Reactions come in real time [but can be filtered] and are immediately shown on the screen.